Mat Nashed
Al-Jazeera / July 30, 2024
People in Lebanese capital fearful of widespread conflict between Israel and Hezbollah following Golan Heights attack.
Beirut, Lebanon — Jad Barazi’s roommates nowadays keep their windows open. Not for the air — but so they won’t shatter from a sudden blast.
Working on her laptop in a cafe in Hamra, a bustling Beirut neighbourhood, the 27-year-old entrepreneur said she is coping with anxiety in anticipation of a possible large-scale Israeli attack on the city. Since moving to Lebanon more than a year ago, the French-Lebanese national says she has gradually grown accustomed to living in a country locked in a low-scale conflict with Israel.
But since a deadly rocket struck the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights last week, killing 12 children, Beirut has been gripped by a state of tension as its residents brace for a major Israeli attack.
Israel has blamed the Golan Heights attack on Hezbollah, but the Lebanese armed group has denied responsibility. Israel has said the group will pay a “heavy price”. Since October 8, when Israel and Hezbollah started firing missiles at each other in the backdrop of the war on Gaza, Lebanon has found itself in the middle of fighting that it hopes does not boil over into a full-blown conflict.
Now, with Israel threatening retribution for the Golan Heights deaths, those fears have exploded.
“I’m a bit anxious because I’m reading the news about this every day,” Barazi told Al-Jazeera.
“I’m not so scared, but I just want this [attack] to happen because then we can all move on from this,” she added.
On Tuesday, it did happen.
Bracing for the worst
Israel does not seem to want to trigger an all-out war and may limit its attack – or attacks – to Hezbollah targets, experts told Al-Jazeera.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military claimed responsibility for an attack in Dahiya, a southern Beirut neighbourhood regarded by Israel as a “Hezbollah stronghold”. Israel said it had targeted a Hezbollah commander responsible for the Golan Heights attack.
The fear among those in Beirut, however, is that the violence will further escalate, leading to a more widespread Israeli bombing campaign.
Wael Taleb, a local journalist for the Lebanese outlet L’Orient Le-Jour, had already convinced his family to relocate out of Dahiya for the next few days. His family was reluctant at first, but they eventually gave in.
“It’s not a small decision to sleep outside of your home even if your life’s on the line,” Taleb said, explaining his mother’s reluctance to leave her home temporarily.
“My mom’s generation is very used to these situations. The small possibility of our house being affected [from the war] is something she is used to, because her generation has lived through so many wars,” he added.
Lina Mounzer, a Lebanese writer and commentator, noted that everyone she knows with a “house in the mountains” – far away from areas anticipated to be hit such as Beirut’s southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley – are already moving their belongings there.
“Everyone I know has gone up there and made sure the [house] is well stocked, made sure the electricity is running and made sure they have a good relationship with the people that provide diesel in the neighbourhood, but I’m not making these preparations because I have no place like that to go,” she said.
Resignation
Back in Hamra, in another cafe, Ramy Taweel, a writer and translator, was on his laptop and drinking coffee. The 50-year-old Syrian national said that he has lived between Lebanon and Syria for years and is accustomed to living under the spectre of war.
He said – before Israel’s attack on Dahiya – that he was unable to “predict” or “anticipate” how Israel would respond to the incident in the Golan. But he was agitated, saying that Israel claims to care about the 12 Druze children who died in the blast, when it continues to kill thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza.
Israel has killed more children in Gaza than all the children who have died in global conflict over the last four years, according to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
Taweel just hopes that no more civilians – especially children – will die in any future attack. As for himself, he says he is resigned to whatever happens.
“I have made no preparations. If there is an [all-out] war, then there will be a war,” he told Al-Jazeera.
“Our people have lived in war for years.”
Mat Nashed is a journalist and analyst specializing in the Middle East and North Africa
